Are Chicken Arks Right for You?

Laying the Foundation for your Chicken Arks (Portable Chicken Coops)

Before you get started building any chicken arks, also known as chicken tractors, it’s important to have a good foundation all laid out beforehand. And by foundation I’m talking about chicken house plans. Sure, the idea of collecting your own eggs or raising your own meat is exciting and you want to get started as quickly as possible, but diving in without a decent plan can turn your experience into a nightmare.

Raising chickens can be a very fun and rewarding experience if you do things the right way. Eating fresh organic eggs and meat that you grew yourself can be a very satisfying experience. In addition, these foods are more nutritious and taste better too. So let’s get off on the right foot and make a few plans first.

Providing a home for your chickens is one of the most basic and important tasks that you can do for them. It will provide protection from the elements and from predators. And if you build it correctly it will also save you money and improve the health of your flock.

The first matter at hand concerns the number of chickens you will be raising. This will determine the size or even the number of chicken arks you need. As a general rule each bird will need about 4 or 5 square feet of space. A flock of 10 will require 40 or 50 square feet. One small portable chicken ark will do for 10 birds. Chicken arks are basically chicken coops that are portable. The big difference is that arks don’t have a wood or cement floor like coops; the ground is the floor.

Once you’ve decided that it’s a chicken ark that you need the next step is the design. Look around online until you find an attractive ark, think about any changes you might want in your own design, and then draw your vision of the perfect ark on paper. It doesn’t have to be a great drawing, just good enough so that you will know how it will look, where the egg collecting door will be, where the windows will be, and a few other things.

Chickens need light so you’ll need to make sure there are one or two windows included. Chickens need a certain amount of light each day or they won’t lay eggs. Windows are useful for a couple of other reasons as well. The smell of ammonia can build up pretty quickly so allowing access to fresh air is a must. Plus, during inclement weather they can keep out the excess moisture.

The chicken ark needs to be built so that there are no large openings. You may think everything is alright as long as there are no openings big enough to allow your chickens to escape, but this isn’t necessarily true. Small predators and wild birds can enter inside using spaces smaller than you might realize. The spaces in the wire should not be larger than 2 inches square and preferably 1 inch.

Egg collecting is something that will need to be done every day. For this reason you need to make sure you have good access to the eggs. A small hinged door just outside of where the nests are located will make egg collecting a breeze. However, if you have to open the door to get inside the chicken ark each time you want to collect eggs you will be causing both you and your chickens a lot of undue stress.

Cleanup is another important factor. When building a chicken coop it’s always a good idea to build it off the ground with a wire bottom that will allow the droppings to fall through. This will make it easier to clean up and also more sanitary for the birds. However, with a chicken ark it’s a whole other ballgame.

Chicken arks have the ground for a floor. The longer the ark is in one location the messier it will become. So the obvious solution is to simply move it to a new location when the old one becomes too messy. This makes cleanup a breeze. Whenever cleanup is necessary, just move your chicken tractor to a new location.